November 26, 2025
Day 85 — Kumamoto
The plan for the day was to leave Kumamoto via ferry to Shimabara and bike to Kuchinotsu where there was a free campground on a beach near the ferry we would take the next day to continue our push south to Kogishima. Sounded pretty good. We were also feeling pretty pleased at getting our repairs done on the way in to Kumamoto, so we didn’t have to waste a day biking around looking for bike shops.
We looked into the earthquake we experienced the previous evening. It was 5.8 and centred 8 km north of Aso town, where we were yesterday. That big ancient volcano still has a bit of life I guess.
Anyway, before we went anywhere the priority was digging into the Hotel Mystays breakfast buffet. It was pretty good! It even had a pancake machine and real Canadian maple syrup!
We left not quite as early as planned for the ferry, which was a 15 km ride from central Kumamoto, so we had to hustle a little bit. We got about 5 km and were cranking along side street, and I went to shift gears and nothing happened. I immediately knew what was wrong. My gear cable had broken!! We couldn’t believe it.
Clearly we weren’t going any further, so we sat on the sidewalk, booked ourselves back into the Mystays then headed back into Kumamoto. Two snapped gear cables in three days! What are the odds!?! At least I knew a place to get it repaired!
Luckily my bike was rideable without resorting to any creative field repairs. I have a triple with a granny ring up front, and Kumamoto was completely flat. So we were back to the Mystays in short order, and dumped our bags. I went off to get the bike repaired, and Marilee got coffee and pastries and wandered downtown in the sunshine.
Returning to Kumamoto did give us a chance to view the castle there. By all accounts it was worth seeing, and is known as one of the three premier castles in Japan after Himeji and Matsumoto (though the main castle was a restoration and not one of the original 12), and we had been regretting a bit that we were just blowing through Kumamoto without seeing it.
Repairs were done in good time. In fact Cycle Base Asahi Omabari didn’t even charge me as they clearly remembered the foreigners with loaded touring bikes that showed up out of nowhere the previous afternoon and got a bunch of stuff done. As nice as that was, I was hoping not to be a repeat customer.
That bit of business taken care of, we were in full day off mode and ambled over to the castle. It was indeed worth a visit and we felt almost lucky that fate had given us the opportunity to see it, particularly as it was a beautiful sunny fall day, perfect for sightseeing.
Though the castle keep was a restoration, the site had a number of other original buildings intact — turrets, administrative buildings, storage buildings etc., with the castle being the centrepiece to a large complex of buildings. There was a significant earthquake in 2016 (7.0, much bigger than the 5.8 the previous evening), which did substantial damage to the foundation of the castle and a number of the outbuildings. The site was being comprehensively repaired and restored, with complex looking engineering work underway everywhere, all of which is not scheduled to complete until 2052. The castle itself had completed repairs, and was open to tour, so we did the usual spiral up through exhibits to the view at the top.
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After ramen lunch in the tourist shops at the base of the castle, and some mall based errands including a run to Mont-Bell, we returned to Mystays to check in. And lo and behold, we were upgraded to a suite again! (The reason for this became clear at breakfast the next day — there was an enormous and boisterous school group at the hotel, and clearly other guests were being kept away to minimize complaints. None from us for sure!).
A curry dinner, and some protracted lolling about in our luxurious digs (doing planning, booking and blog posting actually), and that’s a day. Not at all the day we had planned, but it was pretty good!
Today's ride: 9 km (6 miles)
Total: 4,276 km (2,655 miles)
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